We Have a ‘Domestic Terrorism’ Double-Standard Problem
Only eight years earlier, when a Department of Homeland Security report warned that military combat veterans could be vulnerable to recruitment by extremists, furious backlash from conservatives forced then-DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano to apologize. Based on what we’ve learned since Jan. 6, she is owed an apology.
Yet, as awful as past abuses have been, we still have gaps in our pursuit and prosecution of domestic terrorism that need to be closed, without creating new avenues for abuse. Domestic terrorism is an indisputable danger. The very existence of a racial double standard creates a blind spot that focuses attention on activists of color while giving white supremacists, armed and unarmed, an undeserved pass.
We’ve seen renewed efforts in the past to investigate violent hate groups here at home as aggressively as we go after overseas-based terror groups such as al-Qaida or the Islamic State. We saw a similar big push in that direction after mass shootings in El Paso, Texas; Gilroy, California; and Dayton, Ohio.
But talk of domestic terrorism also triggers an odd alliance between peaceful gun enthusiasts and civil libertarians who are understandably concerned about constitutional rights. Any revamping of counterterrorism laws must be done with the main concern of the Bill of Rights in mind: protecting the rights of individuals from unnecessary government intrusions.
Yes, there is an irony in civil libertarians’ concerns for the rights of white supremacy groups that come together to take rights away from other groups. But such ironies inevitably go along with the need to treat everyone with fairness, even when they don’t always want to be fair to you.
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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)
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